Theme Of Once More To The Lake

Improved Essays
Once More To the Lake
Your childhood is something that you must savour and enjoy because you won’t be a child forever. In “Once More to the Lake”, E.B White speaks of the time he returned to a lake after many years with his son. During his time there, he witnesses some alterations to the place and struggles with the thought of change happening in his idyllic world of childhood. Throughout the essay, he explains that his son had many similar experiences that he had as a boy at the lake .Seeing himself in his son he begins to feel comfort within the setting. He also tends to lose a sense of time as his memories begin to flood in. White’s desire for this place to remain the same causes him to adopt a nostalgic view and ignore logic to come to
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White and has stayed physically the same, so it allows him to ignore the reality that time has passed by. Before he arrives at the lake , he says “I was sure that the tarred road would have found it out, and I wonder in what other ways it would be desolated “(2). The road is a symbol of modernization and advancement, but he thinks that anything built around the lake will demean it. It is his haven from the world and a place to get away from reality. The lake is so similar to what is it was like when he was a child that it’s like the road didn’t even think about it.He believes that if the road had touched it at all, he wouldn’t be able to preserve his childhood.The next morning he and his son went fishing and he exclaimed , “The small waves were the same chucking the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floorboards the same fresh-water leavings and debris…….”(5). The repetition of the word ‘same’ defies logic because many of the things that he speaks of would disintegrated such as the “fresh-water leavings and debris”. Everything looks so alike to what they looked like in the that to him it’s like nothing has changed. He then begins to suspend reality and sees himself as a child again. After he and his son got back for a swim he thought , “The lake was exactly where we had left it, the same number of inches from the …show more content…
White sees this lake as a holy spot and believes that if anything within this place changes, it would be seen as sacrilegious. As he and his son walk to the lake, he “wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot”(2). E.B. White uses religious diction to indicate how spiritual this place is and then defines what makes this place holy to him. For example, he lists the different spots such as “the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and paths behind the camp”(2). The specificity of these places separate it from any ordinary place. He stresses the symbolic importance and how it is worthy of his praise. Still on the lake he,“remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for the fear of disturbing the cathedral”(2). Within this metaphor, he compares the lake to “the cathedral”, a place for worshippers and believers. He fears of “disturbing” this holy place and disrespecting it by creating commotion. He also continues to speak of the importance of the lake and its beauty even as time goes by. While fishing with his son, he looks into the water and says, “This seemed an utterly enchanted sea”(6). This hyperbole exaggerates that the lake is something otherworldly suggesting that it is “enchanted”, something so mesmerizing, captivating and could possibly put you in a trance. He even goes on to say that it is a “constant and trustworthy body of water”(6). It shows that magic is dependable and the lake will

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